All demos download for this update is available here

The final day of voting is upon us, so if you haven't done so already it's time to gather your limbs and head on over to the Nolans 2003 voting page and make your voice heard. Then just sit back and do absoulutely nothing for 5 days until we announce the results live on IRC in #qdq and #nolans on Quakenet on Tuesday night at 10PM CET. An hour of dry award reading and stumbled "errr. I don't know what to say.." speeches it might be, but that's no excuse not to turn up!

Ah, demos. What better way to start than an id level improvement. Connor Fitzgerald returned to The Elder God Shrine to try and iron out the couple of small flaws in the Easy 100% he made last week. We all thought he might, and were expecting a one or two second improvement. I didn't think we'd see a four second improvement to 1:18 though. MUST DOWNLOAD

And now, a bunch of runs on februus.

• The Easy Run began the day the map was released. I knocked out a 0:43 just to show people on Func_msgboard where the secret exit was. (And also to poke Megazoid with a pointed stick. Miasma indeed...)
• As soon as we added the map I took the trouble to look at the route and soon banged out a 0:30.
• I needn't have bothered because Ivan Vladev had given it a little more thought and decided that with a rocket launcher a 0:27 was possible.
• Hannu Kankaanpää also did a 0:27 with just grenades, but Ivan got there first. So Hannu tightened his barbed-wire thong another notch and sat down to make a 0:26.
• But our new bunny speed world record holder, Kay Berntsen used his world bunny speed record skills to get to the rockets launcher in such a fast time that he managed a 0:24. The cool curve towards the exit also helped...
• Thomas Bergendorff couldn't be arsed (his words, not mine) to get to the RL in only two jumps and so did the safer three-jump-combo. His even-cooler-than-Ripah's-cool exit curl still saved him another second to 0:23. (This is turning into a very-hypheny-update kind of update). Back to you, Rips?
• The Nightmare Run followed a similar, but slighty simpler, trend.
  • JMad screamed in with a 0:28.
  • Ripah replied with a 0:25, also predicting that the Nightmare Run would probably always be one second slower than the Easy Run.
  • So Lodis did a 0:23, the same time as the Easy Run.
• One final thing. A gentle reminder. Athough they're very useful for practising runs, when you send a demo to us make sure it contains NO VISIBLE TRIGGERS!!!

Just one demo on the other new map, nesp16. Evan Wagner recaptured the Easy Run from Ripah by twenty-three seconds by using the OG+fiend trick and adding a brand new shortcut (with a nod to Lurker for coming up with the idea for the new saving). This takes the time down to 0:34. Now what about those 100%s? Hmmm?

Windy also did our first demo on the other, OTHER new map. What other, OTHER new map I hear you cry. Why Adamantine Cruelty by Vondur, I cheekily reply. This beautiful new map ws released only yesterday but we've added it anyway. Given that this Easy Run is 2:27 in length I don't think this is going to be one of those "quick optimiser" levels we all know and love. The problem with mappers these days is that they keep releasing big, intricate, well planned levels full of absorbing gameplay and wonderfully crafted architecture. Whatever happened to short and ugly??? (No, not Amrik.)

Still keeping on an Evan/Kay theme Ripah has improved his Easy Run of evspq1 by a further two seconds to 1:06. Time for someone to take this baby below 1:00, maybe?

Oh, please call your demos for Adamantine Cruelty ac_xxx.

He's been a little quiet for the last few weeks but Dane Plachetta is still working on the Hipnotic ownage. He made yet another improvement to his hip1m3 Easy 100% taking off one more second to get 1:22. A couple of minor mishaps later on but the fluidity of the first 40 seconds is just awesome.

Lodis felt it was about time someone tidied up a couple of the DMC records.

• He started with Basil's slightly shakey dmc1m5 Easy 100%, straightening out a few of the curves to save five seconds to 0:54.
• Then he improved his own slightly shakey dmc1m5 Easy 100% (see above), straightening out a few of the curves to save seven seconds to 0:47. Much more like it.
• I guess he didn't really "tidy up" the Nightmare Run of dmc1m7 since this is the first attempt. So to invent a rather horrible verb I guess he tablefilled it. Did a good job, too. 0:29.

Three demos, two wankers people, one map. The map is kjsp1. The Wankers people are Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner. The demos are...

• Before we get to the demos I'd just like to muse on the irony of calling two Americans "wankers" when the word, apparently, isn't generally known over there. I think it was floppy headed, big cheeked, blandly bigoted motor enthusiast Jeremy Clarkson who described the US as "A nation of a quarter of a billion wankers with no word for wanker". I, of course, disagree with this point of view. Gawd bless 'em.
• Anyway, the guys did the 2 player Easy 100% in 1:58. That's all you need to know.
• Optic improved Tim's Easy 100% by twenty-four seconds to 3:09. That's all you need to know. (Except check out the sheer audacity of the final kill, taking a carelful note of how much health he has.)
• HawpTeeque also improved Tim's Nightmare 100% by, phew, loads of seconds. Seventy-something I suppose. Can't seem to get my brain to do this simple bit of subtraction at the moment. Where's Hudson when you need him. He knows about numbers and stuff. The result was a 4:39. That's all you need to know.

  Finally another coop, this time from our good friends and cornerstones of the Udders, Daniel "Monkey Boy" Hansson and Carl "Monkey Spanker" Tholin. They stuck the Swedish boot squarely into the American saq of Evan and Fleck by improving their Easy 100% of commctr by four seconds to 1:11. On a side note, am I the only one that thinks this would make an interesting tag team wrestling match-up. Daniel and Carl vs Evan and Justin in a no-holds-barred naked jelly pit? NO! I didn't mean to say that! Not the jelly pit! Just a normal wrestling match!!

I really must get out in the fresh air more.

It's been months in the working, even once some of the content was already online, but I've finally put up the other games section. Head there for many Metroid speed runs, and other games like Donkey Kong Country and Super Smash Brothers Melee!

Just a little quickie before The Oscars begins... Kay Berntsen has done the nearly impossible and improved Weixing's lightning fast record breaking time on the 100m map by .1 second, using the "hard to perform" Quake2 style bunnies! It looks easy, but it sure as hell ain't! If you think you can improve this 10:34, go ahead... I'll grow myself a mohawk if you can... (that doesn't apply for Mr. Berntsen though! :-)

Here's what he said on IRC: Besides, the Weixing technique doesnt really pay off in the start...the 2-3 first jumps it's like normal bunnies...but after that you can really gain some speed...

Bunny Comparison site.

All demos download for this update is available here

As I hope you're all aware by now the voting for the Nolans 2003 is speeding along like Szalontai on steroids so make sure you get your vote in soon. While you're there you might notice one little error on the page. My name has been mistakenly put in the "Fool of the Year" category instead of the "Lifetime Achievement Award" category. How did that happen guys? GUYS???

One chap I'm sure is going to be walking away with a Nolan or two is Connor Fitzgerald. Now that he's reaching the end of his first year as a speedrunner he felt it was time to go for the ultimate achievement: an id map record. And being the little showoff he is he actually took TWO.

• For his first extravagance he chose Martin's Easy 100% of Hell's Atrium and used some of the tricks he picked up in his recent Qd100Qlite2 demo to improve the time by four seconds to 1:32. Also keep an eye out for the obvious-but-clever new final spawn kill. I'm amazed nobody else has done this before.
• Now that he'd got the taste for id records there was no keeping him away from The Elder God Shrine. A little extra quad and spawn power, and a little route twisting, gave him 1:22, two seconds faster than Daniel. Stupid scrags and stupid zombies that refuse to die on the first shot mean that improvement is still possible if you're psychotic enough to try.
• Since Connor has proved him self to be a great runner as well as a good sport I think it's just possible that I might give him a light hearted verbal kicking later in the update. No promises, we'll just have to see...

How do you follow two id Easy 100%s? With an id Nightmare 100%, I suppose. Which can only mean that Thomas Stubgaard has been putting his mind to business again. He'd been looking at the Oldest Demos page and saw that his Satan's Dark Delight Nightmare 100% had enetered the list at #15. Knowing that it wasn't one of his best demos he decided to try and sharpen it up a little and managed a whomping seven second improvement to 1:24. It's mostly just slicker running but he does get a big saving by using the infamous "Lindberg Curl" at the platforms. Just a shame the last 4 seconds are a bit of a shambles. And just look what record has replaced it on the list... :-)

As you all know by now, we here at SDA like to try and keep things politically correct and so avoid slurs based on race, religion, ideology, sexuality or size of cock (or h00ters if female, we don't like to be sexist either). Anyway, I was just thinking that if Connor Fitzgerald happened to be orientated towards same gender relationships (i.e. he was a bender), not that I have any reason whatsoever to suspect he is and even if he did turn out to be an uphill gardener I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that, but IF he was wouldn't it be mildly amusing if his partner was called Gerald Fitzconnor. LOL Connor Fitzgerald and Gerald Fitzconnor. I'm sure this is a very old joke and he's heard it a thousand times so to avoid causing any offense I shall probably remove it from the update before I post it. Unless I forget.

Phew. It's been a while since we've had three id level improvements in one update. And to make things even better all the rest of the demos are of an equally high standard.

Give your average man a quad, a pent and a rocket launcher and chances are he'll blast himself at random all around the map. But if that man is Robert Axelsson then there's a chance that what you might see are some precision, high speed manoeuvers and a two second improvement to Basil's contest winning Nightmare Run of forrit. And that's exactly what this 0:31 is.

Spookily enough the next demo is also a two second improvement to a Basil record. This time it's Thomas Bergendorff doing the Easy Run of dmc1m5 in 0:22. He says it could have been faster but he's not very good at vore-ball jumping. pfffffff

Next we have a two second improvement to an Arturo Garcia Lasca record. It's done by Arturo Garcia Lasca. Ken improved Ken's time for the Easy 100% of pagan to 0:34 by saving just enough health and armour to do the final rocket jump quadded and then carried the speed to the exit. Worth two seconds of anyone's time.

Kay Berntsen has sent us four top class demos this week. Here are three of them. If you're one of those people that takes the time to read people's .txt files then you'll see that, despite improving really hard records and improving them convincingly, Ripah still hasn't got over that thing all new runners go through of being convinced that "this isn't bad but someone with talent could easily beat it." Maybe it's just modesty, maybe you just don't watch your own demos.... ;-)

• Narrow corridors, tiny lifts, thin walkways, cramped ledges. Oh yeah, jtkmap6 is great fun to run. But a good sense of balance helped him to beat DanielL's time by one second to 0:57.
• Even more impressive is this one second improvement to Denn's Easy Run of fatalpla to 0:46. Be sure to watch the egg demo included carefully for a very strange "mid air scrag boost without taking damage". Could this be a brand new trick in the making?
• But I've saved his (IMHO) most impressive demo for last. David's ih1m2 Easy Run was a jaw-dropper. Ripah wasn't going to settle for a one second improvement, he found a new trick to take EIGHT seconds off the time and get 0:22. An outstanding piece of work. He also includes an egg demo that shows that the adage "less is more" is completely unrelated to this sentence.

Finally, we've added two new maps!

• The first is nesp16 : r_speeds be damned by Necros. A funny, experimental style map by the master of packing as many brushes into a map as possible. Please call your demos ne16_xxx just as Evan Wagner did in this 1:16 Easy Run and Ripah did when he totally owned Evan a couple of days later to 0:57.
• The second map is Februus Depth by master of... well mapping, really, CZG. You can download it here and please call your demos feb_xxx. There's a crappy Easy Run demo by me somewhere over on func_msgboard which shows a couple of tricks if you can be bothered to track it down. But frankly by the time you've found it you'll have probably worked them out yourself... :-)

Well, February is traditionally a slow month here on the Archive. God bless you all for bucking the trend. Hmm. Maybe that should be "Fleck bless you all" or "God fleck you all"... Dunno. See you next time.

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! The Nolans 2003 are finally here! Yep, the 3rd annual speedrunning awards are finally up. It was slighty delayed due to several reasons I won't bother any of you guys with, but better late than never, right? :-)

You will have just a bit over 2 weeks in which to vote. The voting will end Friday, March 5th, 2004, entries received after this date won't count. Go HERE and cast your vote, but please don't haste through it, go through the entire list of demos to ensure a fair voting, thanks.

We couldn't find a suitable date for the award show itself that all of us could agree on, so we ended up with Tuesday, March 9th, 2004, 10PM CET/4PM EST. Print this date into your head! We know the date and time might be inconvenient for some of you that lives outside of Europe, but weekends were generally bad for us, sorry :-(

UPDATE: That's just around 12AM, March 10th for the Aussies (I think...)

GO VOTE!

All demos download for this update is available here

Ah, St Valentines Day. I'm sure you all spent yesterday in a celebration of love in all it's myriad physical and emotional forms. Why here at SDA we spent the day in a variety of beautifully erotic and occasionally barely legal pursuits including cunniforming (me); pythagorating (mwh); clottaging (Radix); flowers, dinner and intercourse (Lodis. Very traditional lot your Bergendorffs); fleectiality (me again); and , of course, wanking like a monkey (Stubby).

All of which has meant that the update has been pushed back to today, allowing these already great demos to mature that little bit longer.

Jozsef Szalontai took a very important step in his rehabilitation last week with an improvement to The Sewage System Easy 100%. This week he has taken another big step by improving it again by another second to 0:51. I think 0:50 can only now be a dream. Still, now that he's broken his "not making demos at the moment" mental block there's a chance that we might maybe soon perhaps possibly see a few more from the Big Hungarian Love Machine. (Or is that Bunny Machine. I never can remember.)

On a similar subject, since we're Joeing it up at the monent. There's a new build of JoeQuake out a week or so ago. So if you're one of those people that enjoys that kind of thing, go grab.

It's been another explosive week for Kay Berntsen. As usual he's been improving records that everyone else thought were safe.

• It's just a collection of box rooms, flat textures and ogres but for some reason people just can't keep off of climb.
  • Daniel's Easy Run came in for the Ripah treatment and fell by one second to 0:23.
  • As did Ken's Nightmare Run which also took a one second pounding to 0:22. Would either of you gentlemen care to fight back? ;-)
• Another map that used to be popular is compugib, but it's been over two years since Alex took TO of the level. But a dog boost (YEAH!) and soem Norwegian style bunnys improved the Easy Run by one second to 0:29.
• It's been a funny old time in #qdq recently. There seems to be more aspiring mapper there than there are in #terrafusion. So when, a few days ago, I was discussing maps by the mighty Necros with Ripah and he said he was going to try some mapping. I jokingly suggested he improved the Easy Run of n3sp03 to pass the time while I found him a copy of Worldcraft and by the time I sent it to him this 1:23, five seconds faster than Anders, had appeared in my inbox. You can tell he rushed it through by the massive, embarassing mistakes half way through. :-)

Oh. I've just remembered. PlanetQuake's e-mail system (in fact, the whole of GSN) is experiencing a few problems at the moment. This means that we have been unable to send any e-mails for the last week and a half and some recieved e-mails are getting to us several days late. So if you mailed us and haven't got a reply it's probably because of this rather than the fact we are rude and hate you. Only probably, mind.

Did I mention Arturo Garcia Lasca a minute ago? Well everyone's favourite Barbie accessory has made his first appearance here in quite a while by recapturing both the 100%'s of pagan back from Denn.

• First the Easy 100% by one second to 0:36.
• And then the Nightmare 100% also by one second, also to 0:36. Completely different routes for the two skill levels, obviously...

Ken also had a few things he wanted to share with you all but... no... I'm not even going to go there. ;-)

Michael Hudson has taken a well deserved break from improving his Easy Run of r1m4 and is instead working on improving his Nightmare Run of r1m4. Nothing like a little variety, hmmm? Using some of the tricks he found on Easy skill he improved his time by a big seven seconds to 0:55.

Next up we have Dane Plachetta making multiple improvements to the 2r5 runs.

• He swiftly beat his own time by one more second to 0:50 with a slight mistake in the ramp room. Then got 0:49 with the mistake ironed out and finally he polished the whole thing down to 0:48.
• The Nightmare Run was a little more straight forward. After perfecting his technique doing the Easy Run he just switched to Nightmare and ran a 0:49, losing a second because of the hoards of monsters he has to balst around.

Finally, a bunch of whippet demos.

• Connor Fitzgerald read Basil's .txt from his 0:09 runs and agreed with the part that said "I think this is optimised but the optimisers might not." Indeed he was soon proved correct when he ran 0:08 on both Easy and Nightmare.
• Basil de Vries managed to salvage his presence on the map with a neat 0:24 Nightmare 100%.
• But it wasn't to last long as Ivan Vladev had set his sights on 0:23. Still two seconds slower the the Easy 100%, chap...

NOTE: I wrote this update yesterday but forgot to post it. Therefore that bit at the start about valentines day is a day out. Try to let your mind drift back 24 hours when you read it to get the proper impact. Or, if you don't read this for a few days, pretend not to notice. Go on, be a pal.

All demos download for this update is available here

Yep, another one in my series of "classic" SDA updates...

• Let's kick things off with Jozsef beating his previous Easy 100% of The Sewage System by 1 second to 0:52. How does he make it look so easy? Anyways, this is a MUST DOWNLOAD.

• Next we have an Easy Run on bnt by Kay Berntsen. He improved Lindberg's demo by 1 second to 0:44. Some very slick moves in this one, despite Kay not being able to hit a certain Scrag...

• Dane Plachetta moved away from the Hipnotic maps to do the Easy Run of 2run5. He improved Robert's winning demo from the contest by 2 seconds to 0:51.

• Robert Axelsson pissed all over jzdoom. First he improved Basil's Nightmare Run by 1 second to 0:17. Not content with that demo he went on and improved it even further by 1 second to 0:16, and while he was at it he did the Easy Run in 0:16 too.

• First one to try sm27_xenon since our last update was Ivan Vladev. He did the Nightmare Run in 0:24, but then along came Basil and improved it by yet another second to 0:23. Basil also did the Easy 100% in 0:51 and the Nightmare 100% in 0:56.

• And for our final single player demo of today we also have Basil with a Nightmare 100% of 2run5 in 1:12.

• ...which brings us to 3 coops by the two yanks Evan and Justin. Congratulations on your 1.000 DEMOS by the way Mr. Flecker!
• First did they the Easy Run of pg3 in 0:22. Very nice demo! Then they did the Nightmare Run of fc in 0:16, and finally but not least they did the Nightmare Run of ih1m4 in 0:16.

I guess that's it for today, bye...

All demos download for this update is available here

Last weekend two hardy runners sat down at 10:00 PM with just one goal in mind. Colourful, good natured pimp Evan Wagner was determined to help his main whore, Justin Fleck complete his six and a half year ordeal of being the first ever runner to have 1000 demos posted on this hallowed archive. When we last left you he had a mere eight to go. Can anyone produce eight new record in the space of one night? One thing was certain, this was going to be a Fleckathon.

• Where better to start than Evan's own map, evspq1? They made a quick Nightmare 100% tablefiller in 1:13 just to warm up their Quake muscles.
• Next came czg04. Plenty of opportunity to go their seperate ways for maximum death dealing and a happy time of 2:28.
• Back to evspq1 for the 2-player Nightmare Run. The middle area gets kind of full of monsters but the odd quad and a well placed telefrag soon clears the way for a 0:49.
• A quick diversion to cdespair to bang out an Nightmare Run in 0:41...
• ...and then it was on to hellctle to do the very linear Easy Run in 1:10, only four seconds faster than their Easy 100%. :-)
• Only three demos to go, but by now it was 07:00 AM. Was fatigue and too much weed starting to cloud their minds? By the look of this Nightmare Run of guard in 0:28 I'd say that maybe the opposite was true. Only two to go.
• They did a quick tablefiller Nightmare Run of cult in 0:17 but frankly who gives a stuff about that because...
• Evan quickly went and punched Cameron Engles repeatedly in the face until he agree to make the final demo a three player Easy 100% of evspq1 which they did, at 09:00, eleven hours after they started, in 0:51 and that, ladies and gentlemen, means...

A thousand demos? Jesus. And that doesn't include contest or QdQ project demos. I think this man has definitely earned himself a pint. Hell, some of our younger runners weren't even born when (SC)(]0Pt1C[) sent in his first demo back in September 1997. That demo, and the next three or four he sent, are all lost to time but as a little of fun, and just so you can see how far running has come in that time, we've included his 0:57 of Azure Agony from 19.09.97 (back when any idiot could get an id record) in the all demos download.

What does a man do when he's just completed an eleven hour fleckathon and submitted his 1000th demo? Why he makes a couple more demos just to wind down, the sick fuck...

• He improved Fab's Nightmare 100% of doom2_08 by thirteen seconds with some fat boosting and no-mercy rocketing to get 1:51.
• And then once again back to good old evspq1 for a table filler Nightmare Run in 1:16. And then the world's first thousand demo speedrunner slept the sleep of the just, proud and very tired.

A couple of nights later Evan was once again itching for some coop and wanted to see if the American Trio could reconvene for a couple of hours but Justin had to work, so Nolan Pflug and myself called to order the first meeting of the Transatlantic Trio. Pings being what they are I was only able to assist with mopping up the start and getting a couple of secrets but it enabled the chaps to improve the two player time for the Easy 100% of hip3m4 by ten seconds to 1:20.

windlash still hadn't had enough of a coop fix, though, so he dragged Cameron back in to improve Daniel and Carl's Easy 100% of Gloom Keep by one second to 0:31. Excellent play!

Some people might say that Thomas Bergendorff is a strange man. First he finds a level that he doesn't like. Namely evildead. He then discovers that it's also very boring to run. So does he stop? No. He carries on doing boring runs on a level he doesn't like until he's improved both runs. The Easy to 0:44, two seconds faster than Daniel, and the Nightmare to 0:56, five seconds faster than the same fellah.

There was a bit of a ruckus over who was having the record for the Nightmare 100% of dmc1m3. Basil de Vries improved Ivan's time by nine seconds with a new route and some intermission nails to 0:34. But Ivan Vladev wasn't having any of that. He changed the route again and recaptured by one second to 0:33.

Can you bunny? Well, if you know of a new trick that'd save a second on the runs of a map, say a new way to get into the coffin on thecrypt, but the records are currently held by Timo and Jozsef then this is the question you need to ask. Can you bunny? It seems like Kay Berntsen has answered that question about himself by improving both records by one second to 0:40 on Easy and 0:42 on Nightmare. Yeah, he can bunny.

That's the regular demos. Time to add the December Madness maps to the tables so you can improve what's been done or have a go at what's not. Yersee?

• 2run5 by Phil. Please call your demos 2r5_xxx. Easy Run in 0:53 by Robert Axelsson.
• shafted by David Hocking. Please call your demos sha_xxx. Nightmare Run in 0:19 by Ripah. NOTE: Runs only accepted on this level. Unless you really think you can kill all the shamblers in which case I can't wait to see your demo...
• sm27_xenon by Xenon. Please call your demos sm27_xxx. Easy Run in 0:21 by Timo Nieminen.
• whippet by Marc Roussel. Please call your demos whi_xxx. Easy 100% in 0:21 by Timo Nieminen.
• jzdoom by Jason Zukowski. Please call your demos jzd_xxx. Nightmare 100% in 0:27 by JMad.

Getting slightly ahead of himself was Basil, who sent in some demos on these maps before we'd even added then. Normally this would result in chastisement of some kind but what the hell.

• Easy and Nightmare runs of whippet in 0:09.
• Easy and Nightmare runs of jzdoom in 0:18.

As always, be sure to keep a check on the current best times for new maps in #QdQ to avoid you spending time beating records that have already fallen. Such behaviour makes me weep, and I'm not a man easily given to tears.

SO DON'T MAKE ME CRY, OKAY?

All demos download for this update is available here

I had a little bit of trouble deciding which demo to start this update off with. You see, We've had four demos that are all absolutely MUST DOWNLOAD and to try to decide which is the most worthy of starting this update is an exercise in futility. Hell, don't get the idea that they're the only good demos on offer. It's been a week of QdQ : Quake demo Quality. Oh, hang on, that acromyn has already been used for something, hasn't it?

On reflection I think it's only fair I start off with Thomas Stubgaard's demo as it's not only an id improvement, it's the first id improvement of 2004! He improved his Easy 100% of the Tomb of Terror by one second to 0:50 by sheer luck and bloody hard work. Remember: monsters are STUPID.

Now it's time to travel up that tallest of tall towers[1], Tur Torment, for some real high flying action.

• Connor Fitzgerald found a new trick to avoid spawning in the friendly shambler and found a faster quad boost to improve Peter's legendary SdSlite Easy Run by one second to 0:42.
• Justin Fleck is not making his race for 1000 demos any easier by reclaiming his Nightmare Run from Amrik by one second in this mad 0:51. SPIKE MINE JUMP! I just never get tired of shouting that. SPIKE MINE JUMP!
• But this record was suprisingly short lived. Connor decided not to use the SPIKE MINE JUMP but used the cable-car ballet instead and saved the health for a big quad boost instead which gave him a time of 0:45, six seconds faster. You know what this means? No more SPIKE MINE JUMPS! :-(
• Not content with just pissing on Optic from the top of the tower, he decided to piss on Dane too and improved his Easy 100% by two more seconds to 1:21. Please note that since this is easy skill it also doesn't contain a SPIKE MINE JUMP!

The next demo is one I've been waiting a long time to see. Not for any particular reason other than I know how long and hard the runner in question has been working on it. Michael Hudson is a man of few levels, but those he does run he can be very tenacious with. Take, for example, r1m4. It's been nearly a year since his last improvement to it and he's been spending the time polishing the route until it shines (check out the neat way he gets to the top of the platform thing). Two grenade jumps and five rocket jumps gave him this 0:43, four seconds faster than his previous.

Three new demos on evspq1, none of which include SPIKE MINE JUMPS!

• Kay Berntsen reclaimed his record from Thomas by one second to 1:08.
• Then Stubby decided that tablefillers just aren't good enough for this map. He showed Optic the difference between a really, really good Nightmare 100%er and a really, really, really good Nightmare 100%er by improveing his, errrr, Nightmare 100% by thirteen seconds to 1:50.
• And then he did what I suppose could technically be called a tablefiller because it's the first Easy 100% on the level but frankly it'd take some smart playing to beat this 1:41.

One of my all time favourites, Robert Axelsson, has decided to reclaim what's rightfully his. The Easy 100% of dmc1m3. He improved "Iron" Ivan's time by one second to 0:20 using the same route but a little bit of "who's the daddy?" play.

But Ivan Vladev was not going to sit back and see his number of records erroded in such a sly manner. He hoofed Timo in the knackers with this Easy 100% of dmc1m6 in 1:36, one second faster.

Thomas Bergendorff made two nice demos just becasue he was bored at the time!

• He improved the Nightmare Run of gloin to 0:35, one second faster than Weixing with just better boosting.
• Then he recaptured his old darkness Easy Run back from Ken by one second to 0:41. Will this provoke a response from Mr Lasca?

Evan Wagner is not a man that scares easily. I don't know why I'm mentioning that, I just am. Perhaps it's got something to do with the fact that not many people have the stones (or the patience) to attempt five minutes records any more. But the Wagster laid into Marlo's Easy 100% of oblivion and improved it by twenty-seven seconds to 4:43. Slightly messy at the end but hey, just finding your way through this maze is quite an achievement.

Which was probably helped by the fact that he'd just finished doing the 2-Player Easy 100% with Optic. The routes they came up with are all over the place and hard to understand even if you know the level fairly well. Is 2:55 a good time? I don't know! I got confused!

Our final demo is Flecker's 991st. He improved Bergie's Nightmare 100% of mexx4 by twenty-eight fat seconds to get 3:12. This relentless monster pineapple buggery means that he only has nine more demos to go before we hold a special Fleck parade in honour of the weedster speedster reaching his millenium. Ohhh golly!

Now I'd like to take a moment to talk to you all about madness. In particular December Madness. Now what would be the madest thing you can think of? Well, personally I think that making everyone wait for a whole month for the results is not just madness, it's downright rude. But that's what I've done so please, and I'm not pissing about now or trying to be funny, accept my sincere apologies. Now, back to business. The outright winner of December Madness was the legend that is Timo Nieminen, with wins in the Easy 100% and Easy Run categories and second place in all three of the others. But don't let that even begin to detract from the well deserved wins of Kay Berntsen (Nightmare Run and MUST DOWNLOAD), Ivan Vladev (Nightmare 100%) and Robert Axelsson (Boost-a-thon).

So, that brings the Speedrunning Championship 2003 to a close. Before I announce the winner I'd just like to thank EVERYBODY who participated in this series in any way for their support. Mr Bergendorff and myself have had a real blast running it and if there's enough demand we might just run a feew more contests for you all. Maybe not another whole series like this, but if you enjoyed these contests please let us know and we will, undoubtedly, sort something out. But now I'd like to give you the top three contest runners of 2003. In third place, the bastard from Sweden who's been in first or second place the whole way through, Robert Axelsson! In second place, the bastard from Finland who was very quiet in the first few contests but blew away everyone once he got into the swing of things, Timo Nieminen. Which means our winner is the even bigger bastard from Sweden

ANDERS NORDENSTEN

A big slap on the gonads for Anders please everyone (by e-mail if necessary), and if you send me your address your prize will turn up within the next month or two.

Now go away. All of you. Immediately.

[1] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I KNOW that mexx9b's "Tower of Twilight" is taller. Gimme some room to work in, will ya??

All demos download for this update is available here

Before we get to the demos I thought you might all want to have a bit of a chuckle at THIS. It's an interview with a couple of guys asking some questions to some other guy and our very own Nolan Pflug. It mostly concerns speedrunning in the Metroid games, particularly Radix's recent Metroid Prime run. He bravely tries to turn their attention to proper speedrunning a couple of times but they're really only interested in Nintendo stuff. Mildly distracting, nonetheless.

Let's see what we have in the way of demos this week. Presented in what I can only describe as "alphabetical" order. (Because I'm reading them straight out of the big .dz.)

So, what's first? Aha! It's a demo on black1, and unless I'm very much mistaken it's a Nightmare Run by our Norwegian friend Kay "Bulgin'" Berntsen. He improved Stubby Jr's time by five seconds to 1:04. Very similar to last weeks Easy Run but he has to blast more monsters out of the way.

Next we have an obsolute cracker from Connor "Phearsome Phallus" Fitzgerald. He improved Evan's Easy Run of czg04 by two seconds to 0:42. If you've never seen a run on this map prepare for a treat. OG jumps, VB jumps, cheeky shortcuts, big bunnies and a pixel-perfect dive into the exit.

We'll stick with Connor for the next two demos, as he chops a second off both of Ripah's Runs on dmc1m1 make the times on Easy and Nightmare 0:16 and 0:17 respectively. These will be damned hard to improve, I think, but I've said that before and been proven wrong the next day.

I didn't think it'd be long before Ivan Vladev improved his Nightmare 100% of dmc1m2, and sure enough he swept through the level like a Bulgarian enema in a time of 1:06, seven seconds faster than before.

Next up we have some coop action on dmc1m6 from Sweden's greatest coop duo who's names are both Axelsson, Robert Axelsson and Rickard Axelsson. They surfed the waves of monsters in this Nightmare 100% in the butt-curdling time of 1:24. This demo goes to show just how difficult close quarter coordination is, even for a duo as experienced as these two, but the cool exit RJ makes up for any small mistakes. The only thing I kept thinking was "why isn't the one that gets the quad also picking up all the enforcer cells..." ;-)

Another coop, this time from America's greatest coop duo who's names aren't Axelsson but Fleck and Wagner, Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner. They absolutely destroyed Fabi-K and Matti-B's Easy 100% marathon through The Netherworld, clocking in an eighty-one second improvement to 5:52. Top route planning and no skimping on the tricking.

Back to Connor again for two more pieces of "ohhhh, my new computer plays Quake sooooo smoothly" mayhem. Firstly an improvement to Ilkka's hip2m3 Easy run, probably the first demo that ever made me grip onto my chair with fear at the speed the player was going (you know, that rocket sequence just before the castle). This is obviously even faster. Two seconds faster, in fact, at 0:37.

The also improved Bergie's Easy Run of jesus by two seconds to 0:21. Same route (roughly), just plain faster.

Now to see what Optic's been up to on the single player front this week. Basically a little Bergendorff bashing on some Mexx levels as he reclaims three of his old records taking his total demo count to 989.

• First mexx3 and a convincing recapture of both 100% records by basically just giving it more fist. He took the Easy 100% down to 2:14, ten seconds faster, and the Nightmare 100% down to 3:11, a huge twenty-four seconds faster. Painful to watch without r_fullbright 1, though.
• If twisty, sloping platforms are more your bag them may I draw you attention to the Easy 100% of mexx4. Not a map for the faint of heart, but here Justin improves the time by nine more seconds to 2:19. I've played this map quite a few times (going back a couple of years when this record looked like it was possible for someone of my skill to improve) and ALWAYS ended up getting lost. Bastard. I hate it. Nice demo though.

Next we have a pretty bad table filler marathon by Me of the Nightmare 100% all the way through dmc. All I'll say is that at least this 9:57 is under ten minutes. :-)

And finally for today we have three runs on Prodigy Special Edition maps.

• Connor snicked one second off of DanielL's Easy Run of p_se_1 reducing the time to a boost-tastic 0:34.
• And it seems that this update has gone full circle now as we finish with two p_se_2 runs from Ripah whotore down both of DanielL's records taking the Easy run time to 0:46, one second faster, and the Nightmare Run time to 0:48, an impressive eight seconds faster.

Before we go I'd just like to point you at some new and updated player profiles. On the new front we have Dane-P and JMad and for updated ones we've got Stubby, Optic and The Poern-star. Worth checking out just for the new hog-lee pictures. :-)

In case you're wondering if that's all the demos we've had then just look at the date on the "all demos download". Man am I SLACK.

All demos download for this update is available here

Wasn't it nice to see Stubby back in the ol' updating chair last week? I thought so. And we may be continuing on the theme of "nostaglic updaters" in the next few weeks as they are likely to be quite turbulent for me. So keep watching for faces that are strangely familiar, and yet slightly grizzled by time.

dmc1m1 seems to be pretty much locked down for the moment, but on dmc1m2 we find that Ivan Vladev has improved my Nightmare 100% by 1 second using a completely different route to get 1:13. This is not over yet!

JMad also recaptured his Easy 100% of dmc1m3 from Robert with some uber-tweakage to take the time down to 0:21.

I have never liked to see an empty Nightmare 100% slot in the tables, so I filled dmc1m4 in 2:24 and dmc1m5 in 1:28. dmc1m5 was an absolute hoot to NH on with it's hoards of big monsters and just the trusty shotgun. I hope someone with some actual talent gives it a go soon. :-)

Wave upon wave of pissed off enemies falling from the sky to end your bitching. It can only be dmc1m6. (Okay, it could also be that prodigy map too, I suppose. But it isn't. It's dmc1m6.) We received three demos for this map but only one will be entering the tables. Robert and Rickard Axelsson stormed the Easy 100% in the respectable time of 1:20. And Justin Fleck went to work on the Easy and Nightmare 100%s getting 1:26 and 1:40 respectively. However, he used coop 2 to clear the dead bodies away which, as I'm sure you are all aware of by now, is absolutely not allowed on maps with coop starts on them. Sorry, Flecker, but rules is rules. We've included the demos in the all demos download anyway as they're still quite entertaining and show you the tricks he used to get these quite amazing times.

While we're on the subject of Optic I hope that you've all been keeping an eye on what's been happening on the Qd100Qlite2 project page, because he's totally tearing up the records at the moment. Not even the combined might of Timo, Martin and Stubby can slow him down. Outstanding!

Anyway, here are some marathons for you...

• Basil de Vries broke the hymen of the All of DMC Easy Run in 1:57.
• Amrik Kochhar defeated that time by seven seconds to 1:50 but he was very unhappy with a couple of the stoopid mistakes.
• So he improved it by another three seconds to 1:47 and was reasonably content.
• But Basil is not the kind of man to let an update go by without successfully holding down a marathon tablefiller. He thought long and hard over what he could do and settled on the Easy 100% of All of DMxSP which he cruised through in 5:45.

If you thought that was all the excitement we could possibly cram into one update then just you wait and see what Kay Berntsen has been doing...

• He started off by plundering the "Phantasmal Garrison", first the Easy Run of pg1 in 1:16, five seconds faster than Rickard.
• Then the Easy Run of pg2 in 1:29, three seconds faster than Rickard. Is this personal, we ask?
• He quickly improved that record again to 1:27. This level is monster mayhem but some sweet barrel-boosting makes it all worth while.
• Before moving on he went back to pg1 and destroyed his own time by another seven seconds to 1:09. I love this demo, the biggest saving is obviously the fast dragon kill but there are so many tiny little tweaks. A great display of obsessive speedrunning. Shame about the slight wobble at the end. ;-)
• When he did move on he went to black1 and attacked Amrik's Easy Run. He improved the time by three seconds to 0:56 with a masterful silver key grab.
• Ripah was also the first person to have a crack at the Easy Run of evspq1 which he did in 1:15.

Then Thomas Bergendorff came along and dispensed some wisdom born of experience and showed "the electric n00b" (as nobody apart from me calls him) that there's truth to the old saying "if you don't get the quad and the time saved using a non-quad shortcut is greater than the sum of the time saved between getting the quad and not getting the quad for the guardian kills and getting the quad, then don't get the quad". These wise words and a little power-bunnying enabled him to take the time for evspq1 down to 1:09.

And that, my friends, is the bitter truth.

Keep 'em powdered.

All demos download for this update is available here

Yep, that's right folks, I'm back, and if you expected me to write long meaningful updates think again. And besides, Morfans has so much on his hands these days, so it's only fair to relieve him from some of the work it involves making SDA updates. So, I will try my best to keep this as minimal as possible :-)

Let's get the ball rolling with dmc1m1:

• Kay Berntsen improved his Nightmare Run by 1 second to get 0:18.
• Thomas Bergendorff improved Ivan's Easy 100% by 3 seconds to get 0:20.

Demos on dmc1m2:

• Ivan Vladev improved Hannu's Easy 100% by 1 second to get 0:42. Soon after he improved it to 0:40.

Demos on dmc1m3:

• Robert Axelsson improved Ivan's Easy 100% by 1 second to get 0:22. Ivan sent in a 0:22 too (included in the big .dz).
• Ivan improved his Nightmare 100% by 4 seconds to get 0:43.

Demos on dmc1m4:

• Kay improved his Easy Run by 1 second to get 0:20.
• He also improved his Nightmare Run by 5 seconds to get 0:22.

Demos on dmc1m6:

• Timo Nieminen improved his Easy 100% by 12 seconds to get 1:37. Nice quad boost to the exit!

Demos on dmc1m7:

• I went trigger-happy and filled out the empty hole for the Nightmare 100% which I did in 0:54.

And that leaves us with 3 demos on evspq1, Evan's new map:

• Justin Fleck teamed up with Evan to do the Easy Run in 0:41.
• They also did the Easy 100% in 1:05.
• And finally Justin did the Nightmare 100% by himself in 2:03.

All demos download for this update is available here

Once again it's been a week since the last update. Still, that's the new-year for you. Isn't it also a week since the end of the December Madness contest, you ask. Yes, but once again we haven't had the time or the inclination to add up all the points yet, but it shouldn't take long considering how few of you actually entered so stay tuned. ;-)

Big respect to Stubbz for maintaining the tables this week as I faithfully promised, day after day, to do this update. So let's see what you've been missing...

dmc1m1

• Easy 100%
  • Ivan Vladev made two improvements to Brent's time, first to 0:24 then to 0:23.
• Nightmare Run
  • Kay "Barrels o' Fun" Berntsen blasted his way past Mathias to exit one second faster at 0:19.
• Nightmare 100%
  • This proved to be a real scrap. I sent in a tablefiller at 0:35.
  • Ivan quickly improved that to 0:34.
  • So I retaliated with a 0:33.
  • And he fought back with a 0:32.
  • So I did a 0:31.
  • Then Ivan did a 0:30.
  • And just as I had worked out how to save another second and was trying to get it to work Ivan beat me to it with a 0:29. Fair enough, I thought. Ivan has bested me, he can have the record and well deserved it is too.
  • Then Bergendorff, the smug git, did a 0:26. ;-)

dmc1m2

• Easy 100%
  • Another very close battle for this one. Brent Wise set the standard with this 0:45.
  • Ivan Vladev stormed in with a 0:44.
  • Then Hannu Kankaanpää emerged from hiding to win the day with this 0:43.
• Nightmare 100%
  • Just the one. Me in 1:14. A tablefiller but not a bad one for me.

dmc1m3

• Easy Run
  • Kay Berntsen managed to improve his run even further to 0:11, just hours before old SDA favourite Qurre sent his 0:11 in. Both gentlemen agreed that this would seem to be unbeatable.
  • But Connor Fitzgerald seemed to disagree, and it looks like this 0:10 proves his point. Does ANYONE think they can improve this???
• Easy 100%
  • JMad had obviously found a run of form as he improved another one of Brent's records. This time by two seconds to 0:23.
• Nightmare 100%
  • Once again the Nightmare 100% tablefiller was mine. Many killings in 0:47. A very frustrating demo to make.

dmc1m4

• Easy Run
  • Ripah wasn't putting up with any of this so called "Selinus" behaviour and stormed his record back with a 0:21 using a faster and even more risky grenade placement.

dmc1m6

• Easy 100%
  • For his first EVER non id level record (excluding contest demos) Timo Nieninen improved Ivan's record by ten seconds to 1:49.

Time to see what Justin Fleck and Evan Wagner have been up to. Easy 100% coop marathons, particulatly when done over the net, are notoriously hard. These guys make it look easy and this Easy 100% of The Elder World in 9:13, forty-eight seconds faster than their previous time, is, I think, their best piece of work so far. Loads of really impressive tricks from both players and routes which, almost without exception, enabled them to finish within a second or two of each other on every map. Watch this shit. It's good shit. I'm not shitting you.

During the recording of the above they improved the Easy 100% of The Sewage System by two seconds over Marlo and FAB to get a glorious 0:35.

Just to pass the time while they weren't working on the coop marathons Optic kept himself amused recording a 6:56 improvement to the second longest (in terms of a combined level/time criterion) marathon on the archive. Marlo's Easy 100% of All Of Quake. Thirty-one levels of destruction and stupid tricks. Just check out (for one small example) the return from the gold key in E4M3 (also seen in the coop marathon above but in single player quad grenades hurt). 47:10. /me bows down.

On to other news. It looks like Stubby has organised a big push towards getting Qd100Qlite2 finished. For those that don't know this is going to be the absolute ULTIMATE easy 100% through the entire game, recorded one level at a time by the worlds greatest runners. There's only a few levels left to go (unless someone thinks they can improve an existing "finished" level) and looking at the talent that's lined up to complete what's left I don't see how it can fail to be, if you'll excuse the slightly excitable bad language, fucking amazing. The cream of the active old school, new school, and new blood runners have all galantly come forward to see if we can't finally close the lid on this epic project.

And finally[1] we have another new map for you! It's the first proper, full size map from Evan "Draven" "Windlash" "Wagster" "Lovepump" "Wastegate" Wagner. It goes by the enchanting name of A Subtle Dagger or the even more enchanting name of evspq1 and you can get it here. I found it pleasant to look at, fun to play, challenging in places and the last secret was a right bastard to find. Please call your demos on this map ev1_xxx.

Right, time for me to watch all the demos that have turned up yesterday and this morning. But before I go, and since I didn't get round to it before last Thursday, I'd just like to thank, on behalf of myself, Nolan, Thomas, Thomas and Michael, everyone that's kept this site going and made it so much fun for everyone. That's YOU, the people that send the demos in. I hope I haven't missed anyone out and if so I'm truly sorry. So it's a big SDA cheer to Rickard Axelsson, Robert Axelsson, Rebecca Axelsson, Kay Berntsen, Martin Selinus, Basil de Vries, Ivan Vladev, Brent Wise, Mathias Thore, George Dickeson, Evan Wagner, Justin Fleck, Nik Skidmore, Cameron Engles, Amrik Kochhar, Connor Fitzgerald, Dane Plachetta, Kimmo Polvivaara, Ilian, Timo Nieminen, Anders Nordensten, Luc de Mestre, Pif de Mestre, Mads-Peter Stubgaard, Denis Nazarov, Carl Tholin, Daniel Hansson, Tim Sladden, Weixing Ye, Arturo Garcia Lasca, Aleksander Osipov, Dan Stukanev, Jozsef Szalontai, Peter Horvath, Tim Doherty, Chris Hamilton, Xiaokui Xiao, Daniel Andersson, Pezzer Mattson, Jonny Andersson, Dima Steklov, Phil, Valeriy Burmistrov, Vlad Burmistrov, Johan Nilsson, Rutger Baks, Hannu Kankaanpaa, Ilkka Kurkela, Timo Kossi, Marek Bartoszek, Adam Terwilligar, Doug Merrill, Danny van de Kleij, Ingmar Poerner, Keith Fancher, Megazoid, Sebastian Olsson and Dmitry Dementjev. Hope you hang around for at least the next year, too. ;-)

[1] there's actually a couple of small things but they'll keep for a day or two. This update's overdue enough without me starting another paragraph, getting distracted and missing another day. :-)